The budget constraints were very obvious:
Manuel Conde, the director himself played the titular hero Temujin, the future Khan of the Mongols. Every character in this movie who was supposed to have a beard is painted black in the face instead of actual wearable beard prostheses. The Mongolian writings on the scrolls are actually meaningless scribbles made to look like Chinese (hanzi) characters. The horses were small and thin, obviously they were rented from the kutseros who used to ply manila's roads back in the day. Even the scene in the mountains were shot in the rock formations in Guadalupe in Makati City which has long since been destroyed by real estate developers. Even the fight scenes contain fencing cliches typical of the zarzuelas a form of Tagalog stageplays popular back in the day, where the size of stage does not allow for realistic sword fights.
Everything about the movie screams low budget yet it made waves in international film festivals and got nominations whereas a colored, medium to high budget Hollywood movie also about Genghis Khan did not.
The reason to that lies in the story. Genghis was not presented as a ruthless tyrant or mindless killer. He was a human with very human flaws, prone to anger and jealousy but weak for his family and friends. Everyone else protrayed Genghis as a brutal conqueror and somewhat of a mystic in their movies - it screamed of orientalism and otherness. However, Manuel Conde protrayed him as intelligent and sympathetic. In the contests between the tribes he fought against people many times his strength and size and yet he won through sheer intelligence and resourcefulness. After an attack by an enemy tribe and without a large army, he was able to rescue his tribe through careful planning.
I am grasping at straws here but I believe that the resourcefulness and inventiveness of Manuel Conde and the whole cast and crew was a reflection of the story they wanted to portray, classic example of life immitates art.
What stayed with me is the ending as Genghis Khan and his bride is standing on top of the giant rock that used to be where apartments are now, looking at a distance, proclaiming that everything they can see and beyond will be theirs. This scene included a montage of horse mounted warriors on the move, burning villages, and wars - scenes that other Genghis Khan movies focused on - then the camera pans into the couples faces ending the movie with the conquest of all Asia as nothing more than a footnote.
